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BlackBerry Key2 is the 'Most Secure Android Smartphone', Company Claims (betanews.com)
The Key2 smartphone, which BlackBerry unveiled earlier this week, is the "most secure Android smartphone," the Canadian company claims. Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: While BlackBerry no longer makes smartphones, it does license its name to a company called TCL which makes Android devices that carry the branding -- and sometimes, a physical keyboard. It isn't just slapping the BlackBerry name on a random low-quality Android phone, however. Actually, these TCL devices have been fairly well received thanks to an adherence to traditional BlackBerry designs. Today, TCL unveils its latest such smartphone, called "KEY2," and it looks quite nice. In fact, the company says it is "the most secure Android smartphone."
Blackberry: "We have the most secure Android smartphone."
Hackers: "Challenge accepted"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But literally the lowest bar you have to overcome. Skinniest obese kid, congrats.
First, TCL+Blackberry=Blackberry mobile.
Blackberry mobile is one of the few android makers (if not the only one) which assigns a crytpo key *in hardware* to each device to protect it from tampering in the field. They do not use a Vanilla linux kernel, instead opting for a Hardened linux.
Running Snoopsnitch reveals a very, very green field, meaning that all the patches are "really" applied. And not like some other android phones, which report a patch level, but in reality do not apply the fixes...
It also has an app called DTEK, which lets you see in depth what your apps are up to.
More info in this old but still relevant article:
https://www.engadget.com/2015/...
Of course, if you do not want a PKB, then you are equaly (or more) secure, and have a longer SW support with an iPhone.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Maybe it is the most secure, but no one will ever know.
I'm rooting for Purism's Librem 5, but I don't think the hardware specs are going to be competitive. And just as importantly, running their own app store isn't going to cut it; people need to be able to access mainstream apps (from within a sandbox or whatever, but it has to happen). Unless Purism can solve those things, I'm skeptical.
Call me when its app security allows disabling network access when I am not manually running the app
Call me when app permissions has option to provide fake location, contacts, storage, etc so apps will still run but not have access to real data
People have very short term memory, it's like this never happebed at all ever:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
Blackberry needs to just die already. It's set my field back by 10 years.
We just switched from blackberries (real, honest to god made by RIM ones) to iphones last year. We finally have a modern smartphone with usable apps that doesn't waste half the device on a useless physical keyboard with tiny-ass keys made for a marmoset.
When I say usable apps, I don't mean nonsense like Waze or Angry Birds. I mean real business productivity apps. Simple things like copying and pasting or opening documents were a royal pain in the ass on actual blackberries.
I don't care if the new one is Android based. We're still using the blackberry apps on iphone and it's garbage. They can't implement anything properly. It's still a closed ecosystem that doesn't work well with any other apps. The benefit is that at least the basic features provided by Apple (copy/paste, keyboard, etc) aren't under BB's control. And we can go outside the BB apps when needed to get things done. The Android model will probably be locked down so you have to use their cruddy tools for everything.
This news is just the kind of nonsense that will send our security team scurrying out to buy blackberries once again. Damn you, RIM. Just die already.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Both are equally insecure. When the owner of the device isn't the one in control of the security landscape then the OS itself is malware.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
..the most honest and trustworthy marketing department.
I have a TCL television, and when it's connected to the internet, it used screenshots of whatever youtube video I'm watching to serve up ads on the TV. It was so annoying that I stopped using the built in Roku component of the TV. I'm willing to concede that it might be the Roku side of things, and not the TCL side, however it does leave a layer of skepticism.
Well, yes, adenoidal teenagers think this whole thing is a giant game of capture the flag FTW!
But real security is a complex economic trade-off between the cost of the attack, the value of the attack, and the law of supply and demand (one corner of which concerns the long-term warehousing of former teenagers who outlived their long-arm-of-the-law immortality halo).
Challenge accepted by the Red Bull movable feast of the socially naive with mad hacking skilz and dark horse omenz to parlay into the Forty Year Old Virgin's tragically unhip middle-aged, free-society business acumen.
that is an essential equivalent to what they're saying. Android is not secure, period.
Who's CEO argued phones having backdoors was a good thing? No thanks, you're the last group of people I want anywhere near my data.
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Saying that ANYTHING using Android is secure is like claiming that a house is super secure because the doors and windows are made out of thin paper.
But it's an Android and that in itself means it is NOT secure. Android is a work in-progress that is has more holes and bugs that it will be at least 10 more years before they can claim that there is ANYTHING close to a secure Android device.
About security, or BlackBerry.
That's not always the case. How many users do you know that turn off firewalls and disable scans on their desktop because it "slows down everything"? In Corporate IT, it happens a lot. If you were right, users, not tech suppliers would be in control.
In the consumer world, we leave it to our suppliers to take those precautionary steps for us.
In Apple's case, security is equivalent to privacy, even from them.
However, if google knows where you are, or can serve up more relevant ads (and in some cases, results), and they don't see this as a security issue. After all you aren't losing anything. When you go to Google Search and you search for an error message when troubleshooting, your location doesn't matter. When you search for restaurants serving Sushi, it does. Yet every time, google ask you where you are.
Apple see this as invasion of privacy, and insecure. Google see this as better service delivery (which includes "relevant" ads).
As far as Blackberry is concerned, security is limited only by which foreign sovereign wants in to your messages and data.
Secure and Android don't go together :) .
I have been a happy Blackberry user for years.
The BlackBerry Passport is the best phone i ever used, the user experience of the UI and the interactions over the OS (under QNX) are amazing, the physical keyboard is great to with the gesture recognition or whatever they call it, let alone the Hub that should be a standard on every "smart" phone.
I had high hopes for the blackberry OS after the version 10 i still don't understand why they are letting that platform die, they should've opensourced it so people can maintain it and they would still make and sell hardware. it's just sad.
CopperheadOS is exactly that, you must painstakingly build everything from source. On top of that by default F-Droid is the only app store thus reducing dependency to closed source applications. IDK of any mobile OS that can top CopperheadOS not even Apple themselves can level the privacy and security of CopperheadOS yet remaining open source.
FWIW antivirus software isn't the most effective first line of defense. Upgrading your router, fixing DNS server, and firewall is where real the security is. Even for a normal family household adding Pihole to the network is a huge huge security upgrade not only it will block all the junk of the internet(ads) before anyone can even download crap to their devices Pihole has already block DNS request to those malicious sites. And as a bonus you will save a lot of internet bandwidths from not loading ADS thus making your internet faster.
But it's still Android, so it's less secure than the iPhone.
That's what I came to say...